OK, I'll bite: What motive approaches justification for such acts as this mass shooting at Las Vegas? In your opinion, I mean. Unless you really are part of the official investigation team in which case, I am really extremely interested in your insights into this investigation.
First off, I am not even in the profession, so of course I am not part of this investigation. Studying people and behavior remains just a personal interest. I didn't say that there was a justification, since I do not think that there honestly should be one. It was an absolutely ghastly act.
Yes, it was a horrific act.
Perhaps I didn't. Maybe you could help me by explaining what you meant.
Because you were obviously asking a truly subjective question, which I pointed out that everyone can answer for themselves. While news is still flowing, albeit slowly, I, and many others have the patience to see where it eventually leads. When the action seems to stop, that could signal more closer to the time for concern.
I think that I am approaching this differently than you are. I know that there will be a great deal of time and effort and money spent trying to figure out why this guy did this terrible thing. On one hand, I understand: it's horrible and it's impossible for most of us to comprehend how anyone could possibly just fire into a crowd, killing dozens of strangers and wounding hundreds. I understand that part of us (by us, I mean: society) believes that if we understand the reasons we can prevent the next attack. I disagree with the second part because I think the 'reasons' that we will come up with are just stories we tell each other and ourselves about what might make someone do such a terrible thing. Because it makes us feel better and like we can somehow control some of those circumstances and reduce the likelihood of another such act by someone else.
I think those are just stories we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better. I wish it weren't so. I wish we could discover some motivation, some set of circumstances that might be preventable or at least, predictive, of this kind of act. I don't think we will ever reach that. I think it is incomprehensible: beyond any understanding.
And worse, I think that if we understood the reasons, we still could neither predict nor prevent the next shooting.
I think the only way we have to prevent such acts is to limit access to such weaponry.
Now, I grew up in a household where there were guns, mainly used for hunting birds or small game. I knew how to handle them, and not to confuse them with playthings. I helped my father clean his guns, mount his new scope, watched him load his own shells in our garage. Helped to clean game after a hunt. My grandfather and uncle also hunted, and all of these people were quite expert in the use of firearms. I'm not afraid of guns. I don't hate guns. But I think that in the US, we have a very sick, very unhealthy relationship with guns and violence and that this has developed over the last 20-30 years. It's not nearly so much a part of our culture as mass media likes to make it out to be. Until quite recently, guns were simply something that country people used to hunt game and occasionally, to eliminate a predator going after chickens or livestock, as a matter of practical use, just as they used tractors and plows. Few city folk needed or wanted anything to do with a gun. Today, something like 80% of all the people in the US live in cities. But we have twice as many guns per capita today as we did 40-50 years ago---and far less practical need.
Probably, but as the days go by, things are slowly coming to light, like the murderer scoping out another music festival earlier in Chicago, which could help prevent things of this nature from happening, or not anywhere near as often.
I don't believe this, although I wish I could. It seems that each new shooting fuels the next, inspires the next, as they try to outdo the ones that came earlier. I don't think we've learned anything, not even from the mass shooting of tiny children. Sure, we could expect hotels to do a better job of screening guests, but we aren't doing a bang up job of getting them to look out for sex trafficking or drug trafficking now. I don't see this happening.
We have to limit access to guns.
I gave the bombing example above. People clearly have the information, but are they actually utilizing it? For my private studies, I focus a lot on politics, but it can work about as well with various other forms of conduct. I figure a possible motive along with the supposed MO, because I see them complement on different levels in order to use this to learn from that, then that can maybe predict more from the other once again, and vise versa.
I don't think we can or will learn enough to prevent another attack. I'd like to be wrong, but I frankly think it's the wrong strategy. We need to eliminate easy access to guns.
